


a night in the trailer (something good)

by lightninginmyeyes



Series: something (yeah, definitely something) [1]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Heart-to-Heart, Missing Scene, Sharing a Bed, nothing happens but, this is no father-daughter moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 21:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightninginmyeyes/pseuds/lightninginmyeyes
Summary: It's just a crush. Exploration of Frank x Amy non-parental, potentially romantic relationship.





	a night in the trailer (something good)

_The corridor never ends, but somehow, her back is pressed flush against the wall. Cornered. Each door leads to a dead end. She feels it in her gut. She’s numb. Still, her whole body shakes._

_Her gun, it shakes._

_She pulls the trigger._

_Red blood blossoms through his white shirt. The man agonizes on the dirty linoleum. His groans echo through the forever hall._

_His pain thunders in her ears. She’s deaf._

_Still, she knows the man with the preachery shirt, the man with the creepy dead eyes, is coming. He’s coming for her. He’s behind every door. He’s around every corner. Her heart slams and slams, crushing her lungs, bruising her chest. She’s can’t breathe, oh god, she can’t breathe._

_Someone’s coming._

_He’s coming._

_It’s…_

 

Amy swings her open palm, hard.

“Shit.” Frank sinks into the other side of the bed with a groan. He presses a hand to where hers had made contact.

“ _Crap_ ,” she scrambles to get something cold from the fridge, “I’m so sorry, I—”

He grabs her arm. “Come back here.”

“But—”

“I’m fine, kid, it’s fine.” He tugs her back onto the bed. He never handles her with care. It’s like, he’s either out of touch or it’s a power move. She thinks the latter. “Take a minute, breathe.”

She sits on the bed. The trailer is dark, lit only by the streetlamps outside, but she’s wildly aware of how awful she must look. She pulls her hair away from her face as she whispers another apology.

“I’d be proud if it didn’t hurt so fucking much.” She hears the grin in his voice. Whenever he curses, it does something to her. “What the hell were you dreaming about anyways?”

She considers being honest as she secures her hair—but decides against it. She’s tired of the cycle: she shows weakness, he shuts her out. He thinks he’s protecting her, but all he’s doing is a kill-shot through the heart.

“Don’t really remember now.” She peeks at him. “Sorry I woke you.”

He’s watching her. “Light sleeper.” He doesn’t believe her.

“I know.” She wants him to drop it.

She avoids the search in his gaze. She hopes the wall she’s building around her softness actually works. It appears it does, as he gets up with a sigh, to return to his chivalrously rough sleeping arrangements. The small, unrelenting couch is under the window; he must be freezing.

“Wait.” He eyes her outstretched hand in the dark. It curls and falls, humiliated. “Can you just…” She sets her hand on the bed next to her.

It’s probably the longest beat she’s ever experienced. Did time stop? It’s dark outside, probably the early hours of the morning. She wonders if her mind will allow her to sleep again, even if he…

The bed sinks under Frank’s weight. Over the blanket, arms and legs crossed, he settles into the wall of the trailer that acts as a backboard. She relaxes into the cool side of her pillow.

Despite the shadows, his features are prominent. His hair, usually standing by sheer fury alone, is smooshed a little by sleep. His eyes are shut, but the sharp furrow in his brow gives him away. He is listening for the moment she passes out, so he can leave her. His crooked nose leads to his set mouth, and his whole injured face is framed by the most chiseled jaw she has ever witnessed.

“How ‘bout you quit staring, and try to get some sleep.”

“Make me.”

Even her sleepy brain is mortified by the knee-jerk remark. He opens an eye, and it sends such a hot streak through her body, she screws her eyes shut.

She wonders if he knows. If he knows that she thinks he’s devastatingly handsome—in the most damaged of ways, that she had called him Rough Road as a defense mechanism against how good he looked. She wonders if he knows she’s fighting the feeling because it’s so cliched for a girl like her to have both daddy issues and a throbbing crush on a man his age.

God, he probably does—Frank’s no idiot.

But, for a second… she wonders if anything is reciprocated. If he is also conflicted by the age difference and his needs. If he’s noticed her in ways he shouldn’t but probably can’t help. She wonders if, they’d met a few years in the future, they’d be sharing this very bed for _other_ reasons.

Heck, how does one turn off ‘horny teenaged brain’?

“Just keep your eyes shut.” He sounds adorably sleepy. He takes a hand and covers her face.

She takes his hand away, giggling, but keeps it. The skin is rough, tampered. Oh, how it would feel against her skin, slipping up into her hair. She’s thought of it a few times before, but in this intimate moment, it engulfs her.

She’s suddenly very aware of the situation they are in. It’s inappropriate. It’s taboo. Can he read her thoughts? Yet, he hasn’t extracted his hand. She slips her fingers between the spaces of his, a test. Does he think this is just some adolescent response to a traumatic dream? Please hold my hand while I fall asleep, Daddy?

The word Daddy makes her way too hot under the blanket and the silk pajamas she stole from Agent Madani.

“Amy…”

Under different circumstances, she would have relished in the way her name sounded in his mouth, warning and… trepid.

But now, she’s just wildly embarrassed by the thoughts of his mouth and hers. She’s willing to play the scared little girl because what she was she thinking anyway?

She nearly blurts, “I lied, about the dream. I do remember.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Is she imagining it, or is he gripping her hand tighter?

He lets her take her time. Frank’s dichotomy is rough edges but a soft heart. She sees it whenever he looks at her, even when he had had the gun to her throat.

“It’s about that guy.” She knows he knows which one. “It’s like… there’s no escape from him or… or from what I did.”

He lowers himself to lay next to her, to meet her face to face. Her heart is in her throat as his eyes scan her face, settling on her lips just a second too long.

“What you did, you did to survive. There was no other choice.” She knows; it’s either she fights to live or cowers to die. “That guy was going to kill any shot of you living a happy life, but you saved that with the same bullet.”

Her vision swims, but she hopes he hasn’t noticed.

“And,” his other hand ghosts over her face, almost settling against her collarbone, “I’m so proud you did.”

They breathe the same air, gazes half-lidded. She wonders who will win, who will fall asleep first. She wonders, if he wins, will he continue to stay, to watch her? He thumbs the back of her hand.

“I’m right here,” he says as her eyelids flutter, “you can sleep.”

“Can’t sleep.” Her words meld. “Don’t want nightmares.”

“Think about good things.”

“What do you think about?” It’s a dangerous question, but, in this intimate moment, she knows she’s safe. “Your family?”

“Thinking about my family leads to the nightmares.” She wonders if his confession hurts. “Honestly, I try to think about simple times. Like… high school.”

“High school?” She snuggles closer to him, and she feels him finally relax into the thin mattress. “Let me guess—you were the captain of the _whatever_ team.” She takes his unexpected chuckle as a yes. “And you were _that_ guy—the one every girl wanted to be with, and every guy wanted to be.”

“I mean, you’re not wrong,” he chuckles. It’s a low rasp, and it wakes her up. “But there was this one girl.”

“There’s always that ‘one girl’.”

“Annie Briggs,” he continues like she hasn’t spoken, and she finds it oddly attractive. “No one really liked her ‘cause she had this wild hair, and she didn’t really care about how she looked, like the other girls did. She had this huge chip on her shoulder—like she’d lash out even if you looked at her too hard. I had always tried being nice to her in class, but…”

“She wasn’t fooled by the charm, huh?”

He shoots her a look, and she giggles. “At the end of senior year, we got paired for a science project, and she _hated_ it. I mean, she was trying to ditch me any chance she got, and whenever I gave her a ride to the library, she was _convinced_ I was trying to kidnap her. She just wanted to be alone and work alone.”

“My kind of gal.”

Did she say something wrong? Frank’s giving her a look she can’t place.

“Yeah… yeah, maybe. But, uh, anyway, we worked on this project for, like, a week straight. I blew off lunch with my friends, dinner with my family, wrestling practice—”

“—which you were the captain of—”

“—and even my girlfriend.” He laughs, but it has a sour aftertaste. “Boy, was she _pissed_. She even spread this nasty rumor that Annie was a homewrecker, and since Kathy was a cheerleader, everyone believed her.”

“What did you do about it?” She’s fighting off sleep because now, she’s invested, but she’s barely making it. “What did Annie do?”

“Annie didn’t act like it at school, but I knew she cried about it. I saw her once, in the library, trying to cover it up…” He pauses and grins. “So, I went to prom with her.”

“ _What_?”

“Sure, it was a big fuck-you to Kathy, but… I don’t know. Annie was something else. She didn’t see my trophies or my stats or how popular I was or anything. She’d be laughing at the dumb shit I did, and she’d listen to me bitch about my teammates. She was… special.”

“So, the jock fell in love with the loner girl.”

She tries to picture a young Frank. No scars, no rigidity, no intensity. Just crinkling laughter and maybe a varsity jacket. Passing people in the halls with a big smile, not a solemn nod. Driving with his girlfriends, or Annie, kissing her knuckles or resting a hand on her thigh. It’s weird to think about him that way when his warped opposite lays across from her, but it warms her a little bit to know the version of him existed.

“There’s no ‘love’ in high school, kid.” His tone, though, is light. “We were just having fun. Life was fun and simple—and good..”

“I don’t have that.” She rests her eyes for a minute. She’ll open them again. She will. “I had a boyfriend, but he’s dead now… and it was never simple.”

“You never had nothing good?”

She wants to open her eyes, her mouth, her heart, to tell him he is the good thing she’ll always thinks about, whether sensual or gentle, and it would keep her through the night without a single nightmare.

She doesn’t get the chance.

But she’d swear, right before sleep subdues her, she feels him close the space between them, feels him kiss her face good night.

**Author's Note:**

> First fic on ao3 and I'm already being controversial. If you're here for it, say so. Shout out to thefudge for nurturing the crackship and encouraging me to post!


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